My most recent books are the Leader's Guide to Radical Management (2010), The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (2nd ed, 2011) and The Secret Language of Leadership (2007). I consult with organizations around the world on leadership, innovation, management and business narrative. At the World Bank, I held many management positions, including director of knowledge management (1996-2000). I am currently a director of the Scrum Alliance, an Amazon Affiliate and a fellow of the Lean Software Society. You can follow me on Twitter at @stevedenning. My website is at www.stevedenning.com.

Happiest Vs Most Hated Jobs: Is Bureaucracy A Bad Thing?

Interesting commentary — good information, though the language you use to describe the “hated” jobs might be a little overstated at times. “Imprisoned in hierarchical bureaucracies. … [t]hey see little point in what they are doing. The organizations they work for don’t know where they are going, and as a result, neither do these people.” Is bureaucracy a bad thing, per se? Are the people who lead bureaucracies always incompetent? [keithrroberts]

Are bureaucracies a bad thing?

Are bureaucracies inherently a bad thing? Actually, when they were introduced, bureaucracies were a good thing. They were a huge improvement on the patronage-ridden, bumbling, ramshackle organizations that preceded them, which were practically unable to get anything done. In reality, those organizations were never really intended to get anything done. It was a feudal system that was intended mainly to supply “jobs for the boys.” Having plans and rules and processes was better than having everything depend on personal connections. Bureaucracies were better than fiefdoms. So bureaucracy became the norm. This was a good thing. At the time.

But then the world changed. A combination of global competition and the availability of instant information to customers resulted in a fundamental shift in power from seller to buyer. Quite suddenly, bureaucracy wasn’t good enough any more.

A more agile organization began emerging

A new kind of more agile organization started emerging and putting these bureaucracies out of business faster and faster. Like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, the managers started running faster and faster but to no avail. The people doing the work could see that running faster and faster didn’t solve the problem and became dispirited. Today, studies show only one in five workers is fully engaged in his or her work.

The survivors in this new world will be those firms whose leaders perceive that the game has changed. A radically different kind of management is required to thrive. It depends on delighting the customer. And this in turn depends on drawing on the full talents and energy of those doing the work. And when people find themselves in situations where they can contribute their full talents and creativity to helping other people, guess what? You have work contexts that create the happiest jobs.

Bureaucracy is simply unable to cope in this new world. It was never intended to. Bureaucracy is aimed at producing average products and services efficiently. It’s not agile enough to delight anyone–either the people doing the work or the people for whom the work is being done. So it’s not that bureaucracy is inherently bad. It’s just that bureaucracy doesn’t fit today’s world.

Are corporate leaders incompetent?

Are the people who lead these 20th Century bureaucracies incompetent? When it comes to C-suite teams who don’t perceive that the world has changed and who try to cope with the new demands of the marketplace by pressing the bureaucracy to run harder, the answer is yes. They are incompetent leaders for the 21st Century. They don’t understand what it takes to succeed in their jobs. Comprehensive studies, such as Deloitte’s Shift Index show that they are running their organizations faster and faster into the ground.

And through their incompetence, pursuing bureaucratic management instead of radical management, these leaders are causing massive damage to the economy on a daily basis and to the lives of people who depend on them: Why Amazon Can’t Make A Kindle In The USA.

The sooner these leaders can acquire the requisite competence in radical management or be replaced by people who have it, the better. (The fact that these corporate leaders reward themselves so lavishly—despite their incompetence—is another bitter irony in this sad saga.)

Is middle management incompetent?

I see the middle managers and first-line supervisors rather differently. These are people “imprisoned in hierarchical bureaucracies”. They are in a squeeze between the real requirements of the work and the inappropriate organizational arrangements to achieve those requirements.

The result? Dilbert-style management. These people are not for the most part incompetent. They are simply caught in an impossible situation which they usually lack the power to change. It’s no surprise therefore why these jobs show up in the list of “most hated jobs”.

In some cases, the middle managers are well aware of what’s wrong. For a current illustration, take the case of Blackberry and read the “Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him”. The exec is so desperate at the leadership’s unwillingness to listen that he/she has had to resort to a public protest to have the issues heard. When one sees the leadership heading the ship towards the rocks, it’s hard not to shout.

We know how to manage differently

This impatience derives from the irony that we know very well how to manage in a radically different fashion that leads to highly innovative organizations, delighted customers and deep job satisfaction.

And we know the massive financial gains that accrue when organizations are managed this way. Just compare the ten-year share price of companies that are practicing the principles of radical management, such as Apple [AAPL], Amazon [AMZN] and Salesforce [CRM] or Intuit [INTU], as compared to companies practicing traditional management, such Wal-Mart [WMT], Cisco [CSCO] OR GE [GE],

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